…in retail?
Why were they made nothing but transmog?
Im playing a warlock in classic now (already tried a few other classes up to 7-10 or so)
Why cant we use wands for combat anymore?
The one I bought on the AH is actually doing a lot of damage. I mean, I can win a fight with it.
Why cant we use them anymore to fight with?
Probably because their usefulness became extremely limited when the vast majority of casters that can equip wands stopped having to care about mana. That list is down basically just arcane mages… it’s been years since I’ve gone OOM as a fire mage. Healers can still go OOM but they typically wouldn’t be wanding stuff anyway.
IMO, it wouldn’t have hurt anything to leave wands as they were, but ever since WoD the dev team has had something of an obsession with removing things.
I guess I dont understand the connection.
So Arcane is horrible with mana…although even OOM they still seem to be able to keep up on the DPS waiting for mana to build up anyway.
but why remove the wands just because mana wasnt so much an issue with some specs?
Im actually enjoying using the wand…and yeah, its keeping me from going OOM, but that seems to be part of the personality of it.
Well, what am I saying…the only reason Im playing warlock right now in classic is to have Life Tap back.
They do seem to like butchering the fun of this game for no good reason…killing anything with any uniqueness about it.
In vanilla/classic casters actually got a lot of use out of their weapons. Balance/resto druids could even melee a fair bit for omen procs and extra damage.
For some reason, blizzard decided casters should have nothing other than a stat stick and never have a reason to use their weapon.
Trust me, id love to be able to throw windfury up for my 2h mace on elemental shaman and get some fair hits in, but as is it only exists for decoration.
Wands back then were really only something you used when you ran out of mana.
Originally wand shooting was mostly used as a fallback when casters ran out of mana, so when mana management was thrown out the window, Shoot became a “niche” ability, which the devs responded to by removing it. Since WoD, the devs have adopted the philosophy that classes shouldn’t have niche abilities.
I don’t agree with that philosophy, but that’s what’s happened here.
Im actually killing stuff pretty easily with the wand I have. Its cast time is 1.5 while most of my spells are 2 or more.
Im fighting entire battles with it just to see if it does ok.
If I mix the wand with some other spell my mana is seriously easier to manage.
They’re as useless or useful as any main hand weapon for casters.
“white damage” (non ability damage) was a common thing in wow, most classes got it from swinging their swords and axes, so casters were given wands to compensate
Wands were pretty great for leveling (my classic mage certainly gets a lot of use out of his wand), but as I recall their utility decreases significantly once you hit cap and you have to start dealing with high HP mobs a lot.
Are there ranged weapons for casters in retail?
I just honestly havent looked beyond seeing that wands dont do much of anything
For the same reason that you don’t rely on auto-attacking with your staff or dagger: Because you should be casting spells instead.
Wands were a concession to either 1) consistently running out of mana while dpsing or 2) having to wait for a tank to gain threat. Neither of these are an issue outside of niche situations anymore, and dps rotations are more interesting because of it.
Which could be quite often.
Still, gave us healers something to do if damage was light and more damage wouldn’t hurt on the boss.
Yeah, but healers can do a lot more damage now than they every could just auto-attacking with a wand. Unless you’re a mistweaver… 
Im playing classic…not even level 10 yet. I dont see how it could be a concession when theyre this early in the game.
Seems more like they were in there just as part of the way the game was designed.
And as I said, Im fighting entire battles with just the wand, so Im having a hard time understanding about using them after my mana runs out. The wand seems to be at least as effective in combat as my spells are.
No. The “ranged” slot was eliminated a decent while ago. Hunters used to put their gun or bow in the ranged slot and would still have the melee slots for a stat stick weapon or weapons (dual-wield). Warriors and rogues used to have a gun or thrown weapon as a stat stick. The casters had the wands as their ranged slot while druids, priests, and paladins had a “relic” slot for a stat stick item.
It’s because the game was designed to have dps run out of mana and be limited by the amount of threat a tank could generate. Thus the need for wands.
I don’t see why they bothered removing the function, but yeah, it’s because mana is a total non-issue for every DPS but Arcane Mage, and Arcane Mage has the tools to replenish their mana so they’d have no reason to wand either. People are 100% always casting spec abilities, not autoattacks.
Wands are overtuned in classic, having played in 2004 i can tell you wands werent that good. Wands now are better than spells up until about 35 or 40 in classic.
Bring back ranged white damage for wands, also: add a nice little heirloom wand to go with it.